


Separation

by EriksChampion



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:30:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2386727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EriksChampion/pseuds/EriksChampion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years later, when he was brave enough to reflect on the unfolding of events, Mokuba realized that the madness which had shaken his world to the core began the day Gozaburo had ushered the construction crew, architects, and interior designers into his office and kept them working behind locked doors and closed curtains for several hours. They had all stumbled out—coats crumbled and eyes blurry—shooting furtive glances down the hallways and into the corners. Yet, for all Mokuba could see, the office looked exactly the same as it had before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Separation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ariasune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariasune/gifts).



1: The Woman with the Golden Monkey

Years later, when he was brave enough to reflect on the unfolding of events, Mokuba realized that the madness which had shaken his world to the core began the day Gozaburo had ushered the construction crew, architects, and interior designers into his office and kept them working behind locked doors and closed curtains for several hours. They had all stumbled out—coats crumbled and eyes blurry—shooting furtive glances down the hallways and into the corners. Yet, for all Mokuba could see, the office looked exactly the same as it had before.

The frequency of unusual events had picked up significantly after that. Gozaburo was known to detest animals, yet none of the staff raised a finger against the many businessmen, scientists, and scholars, who were escorted in and out of their home with parrots squawking on their shoulders or Scottish Terriers nipping at their heels. 

A strange energy seemed to trail after these visitors. They were quite unlike the usual breed of guests that filtered through the Kaiba mansion; the rigid lines of pagers and sharp-pressed wool suits were replaced with something softer—older—that reminded Mokuba of brass, leather-bound books, and black-and-white movies. The rooms felt more thoughtful when they were in them, and the animals that accompanied them felt more alive and more cognizant than any Mokuba had ever seen. He had gawked at them and they had stared back with a clarity and an intelligence that had made him blush and fidget. 

The woman with the golden monkey was—by far—the strangest and most magnificent of them all. 

The first time he had seen her, Mokuba had shivered and felt small—as if the circumference of the earth and suddenly widened around him. That feeling would never completely fade.

Each time she appeared, he had peeked around the corner just to watch her glide down the halls—the warm soft cloud of fur that floated down her back and around her neck and shoulders and a thick curve of dark mahogany hair the only details that he could distinguish. But then the monkey’s face would glare over her shoulder and all Mokuba could see was its pinched, angry face—its black thorny fingers that never seemed to stop moving. And he would turn and reel away in disgust, feeling that he done something immensely ignorant and shameful.

Gozaburo’s meetings with the woman with the golden monkey always lasted the longest. Even hours after she left the scent of her perfume would still linger in the air, and a conniving spark would still smolder in Gozaburo’s eyes—reminding Mokuba of the monkey that resided on the woman’s shoulder.

2: The Infinite Blade

Things had changed again the day the first package arrived. It had appeared a few moments before dawn, when a thick mist still clung to the lawns that surrounded the house. Everything had been still and silent—except the package itself. It had seemed to burn and bristle. 

It had appeared on the edge of Gozaburo’s desk: a metal box so massive that the room had seemed to orbit around it; layers of wood chips, tissue paper, a thin black velvet bag, and—finally—a sliver of metal no longer than Mokuba’s palm—but somehow infinitely larger. Its size, Mokuba would later realize, was derived not from its physical dimensions, but from the enormity of all it was capable of destroying.

Gozaburo had handled it with a pair of tweezers and held it up to the first cold white beams of the morning light. In that moment Mokuba hadn’t known which was stronger—the blade his step-father held, or the rays of the distant sun that seemed to have strained against time and space specifically to strike it.

The blade became Seto’s new project. Gozaburo had spared no expense outfitting the labs in the basement of Kaiba Corporation with every substance on earth that could destroy or be destroyed. Seto had spent hours locked away in his fortress of glass and steel—but he had found nothing. There was nothing the blade couldn’t cut—and nothing that could tarnish it.

Seto and Mokuba had discussed the matter in whispers that contained more silence than speech. 

Mokuba had made no effort to hide his fear. He had urged Seto to be careful.

Mokuba shuddered. 

Why had he not listened?

Seto had not been frightened. He had held the blade flush against his check, trying to feel for himself the moment where it stopped slicing, listening to the harmony of the infinite end of the universe. It had made him laugh, and when he had laughed then the sound had reminded Mokuba of the blade itself—small, fine, and insidious enough to percolate down through all the cracks and fissures in everything that no one had ever known were there. And Mokuba had realized then that not only could the blade slice through every physical substance they had ever known, it could break some things that Mokuba himself could not touch—could never reach.

3: The Gobblers

It had happened so quickly: one thin frosty trickle erupted into an icy torrent—a raging river that engulfed them all. That thin prism of a blade outfitted an army. The air around them froze and fell apart. Kaiba Corporation became the most dangerous place in the world—in all the worlds.

Pleased with the results of the initial tests, Gozaburo ordered an endless stream of the beautiful, revolting metal that had made the first infamous blade. Their machines bent it into swords and bullets and body armor. Their factories spewed acrid black smoke. And within a few months’ time Kaiba Corporation had the most magnificent army in the world—in all the worlds. And ghosts now roamed the hallways: ghosts of those that the metal had killed and ghosts of those it had brought to life.

Mokuba had feared then that Seto was becoming one such ghost. Each morning the contours of his face became been harder, his voice lower, his mind sharper. His heart had beat time instead of blood, and Mokuba had feared for him without understanding why.

It had frightened him all the more to realize that Gozaburo had noticed the change as well. Seto was no longer content to bow his head and acquiesce. His time in the lab, his time melting that metal, was gradually rendering him equally unbreakable. He had taken to sneaking out of his room, away from his studies. He had taken to talking back and staring down anyone who dared oppose him. And with each of these acts of rebellion, the world became a shade less soft. 

With each shipment of the metal that arrived Mokuba’s world was rent again—there had been times when it was filled with so many holes that he could feel the caustic winds of Heaven and Hell blowing across his face, threatening to sweep him and everyone else away.

“This is an exciting time,” Seto had said, spinning a needle of the strange metal between his fingers. “No one has seen anything like this before.” He had laughed like a flurry of sparks, and even his eyes had seemed to smolder. He clenched the needle in his fist. “This will change everything for us.”  
Mokuba still felt revolted and cold when he recalled that memory. If only Seto had known how right he had been.

The promise of their glorious, glimmering future was shattered the morning they awoke to the sound of Gozaburo shouting at the emptiness in his office. The visitors—and the shipments they delivered—had become less frequent; their shining silver river was beginning to run dry.

At first, Seto and Mokuba had not grasped the reason why, but the dinner party that Gozaburo hosted the next week made the reason painfully clear: their suppliers now coveted something far more precious than the gold that Gozaburo had thrust at their feet.

Seto and Mokuba had sat across from the woman with the golden monkey and two men—scholars from her institution—that had seemed dim and scarcely alive when placed beside her champagne and silken glamour. The monkey picked at the food at the edge of her plate, but even then Mokuba had suspected that it was eager to sink its teeth into larger prey.

“You have such sweet children, Mr. Kaiba.” She smiled at them both. Mokuba blushed.

Gozaburo scoffed. “When they’re not being completely useless.”

“Oh—but how could they be?” She turned to Seto. “You are Seto, aren’t you? Your father has told me so much about the brilliant work that you’ve been doing with our product. I’m quite impressed.” Her smile was as devastating as the metal she sold them.

Seto’s expression had remained stoic and sharp for the majority of the evening—his eyes carefully trained on the golden monkey. But in the light of this woman’s meticulous flattery even he could not completely keep the color from rising in his cheeks.

“It has been a very enlightening project.”

She had leaned back slightly in her chair, and under the sheen of her smile Mokuba had thought that he could detect—if only for a moment—the same hard and persistent anger, the same unshakeable thirst for destruction—that burned in the eyes of her villainous pet. She had extended her hand gently—curling her fingers in its fur—and in that pose they had appeared not as two separate beings—but an extension of the same twisted, glorious soul.

“And a profitable one, I presume?”

Gozaburo had seemed to draw himself up at the other end of the table. “The full potential of this—substance—has not yet been realized. We will require a significant investment of time and financial resources in order to see what it is truly capable of.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” She sipped her wine, and she and Seto had seemed to share the same expression—an expression that had made Mokuba feel that he was stranded between the two sides of a chessboard. 

The dinner party had gradually unwound and grown dim. Gozaburo had begun to reel them back in—to lock them back up the way he always did when their scheduled public appearances were coming to a close. But the woman had interjected, placing a hand on his wrist—while the monkey had shredded her napkin.

“Please, Mr. Kaiba—let the boys enjoy their freedom a few hours longer. Surely they’re old enough to choose their own bedtimes?”

Seto and Mokuba had exchanged a curious glance. Since falling into Gozaburo’s grip it had seemed that there was no minute that had gone unmanaged, no decision small or insignificant enough for them to be permitted to make for themselves. And—now—under the influence of a few melodious words and sweet expressions—Gozaburo had smiled at them.

“And—would you mind refilling my glass?” She had pressed her wine glass against his chest—both inviting him to embrace the hand that held it and pushing him away.

Gozaburo bowed—stiffly. “Of course, Mrs. Coulter.”

The void created by his absence had immediately been filled by the warm rush of Seto and Mokuba’s exultation. 

“Father never bows to anyone,” Seto remarked, stunned.

“Or does anything for anyone else…” Mokuba added. He turned to the woman—Mrs. Coulter—as if seeing her for the first time. “How did you do that?”

“In my line of work, managing headstrong personalities is something of a cruel necessity.” She leaned forward. The monkey crept closer. “It’s a skill that can be taught.”

Seto’s eyes flickered to Gozaburo’s empty seat. “I’m listening.”

She laughed like dappled sunlight. “You are quite ambitious.” A curl of her velvet smile. “But it doesn’t do to practice war games over the dining table.”

“Then where.”

Mokuba had turned to Seto sharply. His voice had been so cold, so cutting and unfamiliar.

“Nii-sama…” Seto hadn’t heard him, or had refused to. He had been focused on one thing alone, racing towards it with the same destructive ardor as the bullets that he designed for Kaiba Corp as they tore through flesh and bone.

The monkey’s fur had stood on end. Mrs. Coulter smiled. “There is one place we can go. You must follow me.”

4: Bolvangar

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

Standing in the semi-dark hallway, out of Gozaburo’s sight, Mrs. Coulter seemed to take on a more serious tone. 

Seto and Mokuba bristled at the question. “Not exactly.”

She smirked. “Another of your father’s anonymous business associates to be exploited and tossed away once they no longer prove useful?” The monkey was hopping back and forth on her shoulders. “I’m afraid that the contract your father has drawn up with my institution is more complex than that.”

Seto leaned forward. “Who do you represent?”

The monkey’s face remained fixed on them even as she turned away. “Follow me, and I will take you there.” She tilted her head towards Mokuba and he could feel his breath catch when she addressed him. “You would like that, wouldn’t you—to leave this place?” Her hand drifted upward, caressing the head of her monkey. “In my world, children like you two are very important.”

She began walking down the hall, and Seto and Mokuba hurried after her. She led them up to Gozaburo’s office, and the metal and mahogany of his office door seemed to melt underneath her hands as easily as Gozaburo’s iron will.

Seto and Mokuba had been barred from entering the office ever since the dealings with the woman with the golden monkey had begun. Now they understood why. In the middle of the room, floating in the dim early evening light, sitting silently between tables and chairs and everything ordinary—was a hole in the universe. 

Seto jolted backward and thrust his arm in front of Mokuba’s chest. “What is that?!”

“Nothing to be afraid of, Seto. This is how I move from my world into yours. It’s as simple as walking through a doorway.” She stepped closer. “It’s not dangerous—I promise. And it will be the most wonderful thing you ever do.”

Seto was still breathing heavily, his arms shaking. For a moment it seemed that he might charge out of the office—dragging Mokuba with him—down the hallway and back into the dining room. 

Mokuba still often wondered what would have happened if they hadn’t heard Gozaburo’s footsteps behind them—if his voice hadn’t thundered down the hallway—caustic and explosive.

What path might their lives have taken—if he had opened the door just a few moments later?

But the answer to the question was sealed away in another world and Mokuba would never see it. Because they had heard the crack of Gozaburo’s voice, they had seen the golden glint in that woman’s eyes, and they had held hands and ducked into another world.

\--  
Mokuba had kept his eyes clenched shut until Seto place a hand on his shoulder. “It’s alright, Mokuba,” his voice was cautiously subdued. “This place doesn’t seem dangerous. Yet.”

They were standing in another office—though this one felt remarkably different from Gozaburo’s. Every surface was crisp metal and gleaming glass, any trace of shadow was blasted out of the corners by harsh overhead lights. The air smelled dirty and stale.

“Where are we?” Mokuba asked. “Where did that lady go?”

“I don’t know.” Seto stepped over to a steel-topped table behind them and picked up a stethoscope. Almost every surface surrounding them was stacked with trays of medical tools, glass jars of cotton balls and tongue decompressors, tins of bandages. 

Mokuba followed Seto’s gaze around the room, suddenly feeling very cold. “Well at least we can see who isn’t here! We got away from him! We’re free!...Right, Seto?”

Seto’s jaw clenched. “That would appear to be the case.” He snapped a toothpick that he hadn’t noticed he had been gripping between his fingers.

There was a knock on the door, followed by a soft, brisk voice that neither of them could recognize. “Are you ready? It’s time for your appointment.”

Seto and Mokuba exchanged a perturbed glance but had no time to respond before the door opened and a nurse—with a bluebird sitting on her shoulder—swept into the office. “Oh, there are two of you,” she remarked. “How unusual.”

Mokuba had bristled at the comment but said nothing—merely turned to Seto with a look of helpless loyalty which Seto didn’t seem to see. His gaze was fixed on the nurse.

“Where are we? What happened to Mrs. Coulter?”

“Oh—Mrs. Coulter had to step out for a minute, dear. Don’t worry—she’ll be back very soon. Now, we’re just going to take a few measurements and—”

“Where are we.” Seto pressed, chin and chest thrust forward and hands balled into fists at his side.

“Somewhere where you’re completely safe.”

Seto looked close to snarling, but the nurse didn’t seem to notice. “If you stay quiet and behave,” she said, pulling a roll of measuring tape and a thermometer out of a large pocket in her dress. “This will be much easier for both of us.”

Seto jerked away from her encroaching hands and stamped his foot on the ground. He had appeared on the cusp of releasing a torrent of obscenities when the door swung open again and Mrs. Coulter entered.

“Julia, there’s no need for an examination this time.” She glided up to Mokuba’s side and placed her hand on the top of his head. “These boys are here by my invitation.”

“You mean, they’re—”

“There’s no need for them to be examined now, no.”

The nurse turned away from Seto. “My apologies, Mrs. Coulter. I didn’t know.”

Mrs. Coulter brushed the apology aside. “Come with me, boys. I’d like to show you around and explain how you will be able to help me here.” She led Mokuba out with a hand fix firmly around his wrist.

“So, where are we exactly?” Mokuba asked once they left the office and were marching down the icy, empty hall. 

“This is where I work. We do very important theological research at this facility, in addition to providing a safe place to live for children who don’t have one. If you like it here, you will play a very important part in our work.”

Mokuba bit his lip and tried to swallow the anxiety welling up in his stomach. Two of you—how unusual…a safe place for children who don’t have one…The words were still fresh and familiar enough to make his heart wilt. He glanced beseechingly at Seto’s profile.

“What kind of part?”

She smiled, and Mokuba suddenly noticed the golden monkey fidgeting on her shoulder.

“I was very impressed when Mr. Kaiba told me about the success of your experiments.” They approached a pair of heavy metal doors which Mrs. Coulter turned a wheel to unlock. “But you’ve discovered very little. This metal is capable of destroying much more than matter.” The doors slid open with a cold hiss.

“Like what.” Seto had long ago trained his voice to sound continually unimpressed, but Mokuba thought that he could detect the familiar note of his brother’s persistent, penetrating curiosity. 

“In your world you would call it the soul.”

“That’s not possible,” Seto scoffed. But he was quickly silenced when the lights flickered on.

The room they had entered was achingly empty—as if all pleasant sensations had been forcibly vacuumed out—and composed entirely of white and silver. Its only notable fixture was a large steel mesh cage and—leering over it—a long, shadowy blade.

“It’s the same,” Seto was now struggling to keep his voice terse. “But what does it do?”

“Would you like a demonstration?”

Seto looked back and forth between Mrs. Coulter and the blade…the strange case it was attached to…Mokuba had wanted to yell, to shake himself free of the woman’s grasp which suddenly felt so invasive and vile. It was as if his inner voice has been brutally silenced—his spirit suffocated. 

“Your father has been immensely interested in the progress of this project. I believe his intention is to take over this work himself—but you might find that it’s well-suited to your own interests.”

Seto’s face was cool and rigid. He nodded. “Show me.”

They had brought in a quivering girl, no younger than Seto but somehow reduced—Mokuba had thought—by the magnitude of her fear. She clutched a trembling squirrel to her chest.

“Mrs. Coulter,” Mokuba asked as a nurse led the girl to the center of the room and began to measure her heart rate and her temperature—pausing periodically to make a note of something on her clipboard. “Why does everyone here have animals with them all the time?” Even as he asked the question he was aware that he was stepping over some kind of invisible social convention—he could see that in the look of indignation that distorted the monkey’s face.

But Mrs. Coulter smiled kindly. “What it is that makes you Mokuba?”

“I-I don’t think I understand the question…”

“It’s simple. If you suddenly woke up one morning in a different body—would you be a different person? Of course not. So what is it that makes you you? In your world, it’s something you can’t see—you call it a soul or a spirit. In my world,” she burrowed her fingers in the monkey’s fur. “We can see it, and talk to it, and everyone else can see it, too. We call them dӕmons.”

Mokuba looked back and forth between the beautiful woman and the grotesque monkey at her side. Seto was watching them intently, but said nothing.

“When we’re young, our dӕmon’s form can change, and the relationship between a child and their dӕmon is incredibly powerful and important. But,” she gazed with a kind of cruel distaste at the girl withering in front of them. “As we get older, that relationship becomes more…complicated, and a time comes when maintaining that connection with your dӕmon becomes a source of pain and confusion. So it’s better to take the connection away, and that way you’ll never have to feel confusion or doubt about anything.” She finished with a small satisfied smile. “You’re doing very well, Bridget.” 

Bridget didn’t seem to hear her. She was gazing into the eyes of the squirrel. Its claws drew drops of blood on her large white tunic. She was crying.

The nurse stepped away, and two men took her place. One took Bridget by the shoulder, the other pried the squirrel out of her trembling hands.

The moment the two were separated, the girl began to howl. Her sobs echoed off the walls, hurdled back and forth around the room, and made Mokuba’s heart sob. Seto seemed to be similarly affected: he kneaded the space between his ribs, eyes large and hollow.

“It’s alright, Bridget—there’s no need to cry. Just think of how nice you’ll feel when this little cut is over.”

Mrs. Coulter’s words never reached her. She had lost all sight and all sound. She had lost everything but the pain of separation that radiated out of every cell in her body and a cry of betrayal and devastation as profound as that which had been heard at humankind’s first funeral. 

“Is this—usual?” Seto choked.

“The shock of the initial separation can be quite great, but it is temporary.” Bridget was screaming. “However, the beneficial aftereffects last a lifetime.”

The girl was cowering in one corner of the metal cage, her dӕmon in the other. They were crying, reaching for each other. The blade swung down. And they would spend the rest of their lives reaching.

\--

They had been put up in a private room: two small beds with coarse, off-white sheets, a clapboard dresser, and the stench of industrial-strength disinfectant. They had lingered side by side on the precipice of sleep for hours—no quite able to surrender themselves to it, but unable to stop dreaming.

“Seto…do you think that that girl will be alright?”

“I don’t know, Mokuba.”

“She seemed…so—”

“I know.” Seto glared into the darkness, twisting his sheets. “I don’t understand why Gozaburo would even be interested in this technology! It’s so—” He fell silent.

\--

The morning was crisp and white. Mrs. Coulter and her aides gave them a tour of the facility—hastily cobbled-together and overcrowded classrooms, a sticky and chaotic dining hall, endless rows of thin cots and wobbly bunk beds. It was one small cell of warmth—and the only place where one could hear a human voice—in the hundreds of miles of snow and emptiness that surrounded them. 

They visited the room where they kept the dӕmons. It was stacked high with the remnants of tattered souls: a kitten that pawed at the walls of its glass cage, a small dog that whimpered when Mokuba came too close, a butterfly despondently flapping its wings. 

“This just seems so horrible!” Mokuba had gasped. Seto had elbowed him in the ribs and eyed him sharply. 

But Seto was indignant. Mokuba could see it in the rigid line of his jaw, the flare in his eyes. 

“I just still don’t completely understand,” Mokuba explained. “I mean, maybe it helps people or something—but why does it have to hurt them so much?”

Mrs. Coulter frowned at him, head titled slightly to the side. “Growing up is always painful, Mokuba. By separating children from their dӕmons when they are still young, we spare them a lifetime of suffering.”

They talked with teams of scholars, pored over tomes of data—all the children who had been admitted to the facility reduced to measurements of height and weight. They had all been photographed, and in the photos and in the classrooms and in the halls they all looked quiet and afraid. 

“Seto—” Mokuba pulled on his sleeve when they had a moment alone. “This place gives me the creeps. I think we should leave. I don’t want to be a part of this.”

Seto nodded and walked down the hallway—back to the laboratory.

\--

And the procedures continued. And children continued to fade away, their dӕmons crumbling to dust. Seto spent longer hours working in the laboratory—Mrs. Coulter’s monkey dӕmon peering over his shoulder—and Mokuba thought that Seto had begun to crumble into dust, too.

Until the day Gozaburo found them.

His appearance sent shock waves radiating through the laboratory. Mokuba had gasped and Seto had glowered, but Gozaburo ignored them—eyes and shoulders rigid with contempt.

“Is he ready?”

Mrs. Coulter rose, smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt. The monkey grinned. “Yes, the time has come.”

He nodded. “Show me.”

Mokuba was seized. Two pairs of hands seemed to penetrate his heart. He tried to scream, but his voice and his tears were gone—locked in a glass case, in a metal mess cage.

Seto sprung to his feet. “What is going on here?! Let him go! Now!” He was about to charge them, but Mrs. Coulter flung an arm across his heaving chest. The monkey hissed. Gozaburo looked pleased.

“Seto,” the sweetness in her voice was burning off quickly. “Just listen for a moment.” He tried to shake her hands away and she gripped him tighter. “Seto,” she began again. “Did you really think you could get all this for nothing?” Seto’s gaze darted between her and Gozaburo before resting on Mokuba. It remained there—heavy, cold, hopeless.

When he didn’t reply, she continued with a metallic laugh. “All this that you’ve been given, the opportunities you’ve had—did you think you’d never have to pay for any of it?” She shook her head with a smile. “I’m afraid that things don’t come that easily. Your father and I made an agreement: a year’s supply of the metal that you can use to rule your world—for the soul of the one of the Kaiba brothers.”

Their gaze hadn’t broken. Even today, Mokuba was convinced that that was the one thing that could never break—that no knife could ever cut. When Seto looked at him like that, Mokuba didn’t need to cry.

“The soul of one of the Kaiba brothers,” he repeated. “One.” He smirked. “I’m assuming that your contract didn’t specify which one.”

“That’s correct.” Gozaburo’s voice had always sounded like the first gunshot to instigate a massacre. 

“Then use me.”

It was at this point that Mokuba’s memory became unclear. He recalled the hands around his shoulders dropping away; he had gasped and cried as the blood rushed back into his heart. Seto had walked—unescorted—into the metal cage. As the door slammed shut he had looked at Gozaburo with an expression of tenacious accusation and unflinching acceptance. 

Mokuba had screamed his name. Didn’t he know that this wasn’t just a game? Didn’t he remember the girl with the squirrel daemon, the way the dӕmons disappeared—how they just stopped existing?

But Seto didn’t cry and didn’t tremble as the blade began to swing down. He looked ahead, calmly, unblinking, completely unaware of what he was losing until it was already gone.

When it was over all he said was “Oh.”

5: The Blue-Eyes White Dragon

For three days Mokuba had remained steadfast at his bedside. He held his hand. He stroked his hair. He sobbed against his chest. But Seto remained unconscious, unreachable.

He had unleased a blustering fury of rancor on Yugi—the other Yugi—for robbing him of the only person on earth he had ever loved. And the other Yugi had watched, dark-eyed and pointedly impassive, only to reply, “Do you sincerely believe that this is your true brother—all that he is capable of becoming?”

And Mokuba had shook from head to foot and he couldn’t say yes. He couldn’t say yes because he could see something that no one else could: his brother’s dӕmon—or what remained of her—always stoic and empty and remote—frozen in the last form that she had ever taken.

“Mokuba, your brother’s heart has been deeply corrupted. If he hopes to free himself from the shadow game that I have given him, he must repair the damage that has been done.”

Mokuba grit his teeth, doing all he could to resist the urge to shake his brother back into consciousness. He gulped, and—with trepidation—let his gaze drift down to the mangled and beautiful half-creature that sat at the end of his bed. There had been a taboo against discussing it—a strict order in place that they were never to acknowledge it. And yet…Mokuba couldn’t keep from looking.

“Please…” he sighed. “Just come back.”

Mokuba’s breath caught. Because for the first time he could remember, she seemed to hear him. Her ears twitched, her head titled slightly—as if trying to locate the source of a distant, half-imagined voice. For the first time, there seemed to be light in her eyes.

Seto’s hand fluttered to his chest, and a small smile spread across his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> I had always assumed that the knife they use to cut off daemons at Bolvangar is the same material that the subtle knife is made out of (because what else could it be, right?) but as I was doing research for this piece I realized that that's never made explicitly clear. I also learned that material on the background of the subtle knife is surprisingly lacking. There doesn't even seem to be a name for what it's made of, and no information available at all on how the Bolvangar version was created. I guess we can add that to the list of questions that the Book of Dust will hopefully eventually someday answer *sighs and looks meaningfully at Philip Pullman*


End file.
